The UK spy agency MI6 experimented with using semen as invisible ink; presumably because this fluid was readily available to several of their field agents on a few moments' notice. The agent in charge of the project? Mansfield Cumming. This and other revelations appear in
MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, to be published this week.
A member of staff close to "C", Frank Stagg, said that he would never forget his bosses' delight when the Deputy Chief Censor said one day that one of his staff had found out that "semen would not react to iodine vapour".
Stagg noted that "we thought we had solved a great problem".
However, the discovery also led to some further problems, with the agent who had identified the novel use having to be moved from his department after becoming the butt of jokes.
MI6 'used bodily fluids as invisible ink'
(
via Super Punch)
(Image: Invisible ink, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from superfantastic's photostream)
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Mansfield Cumming?
Man’s field cumming?!
Nominitive determinism.
I bet James Bond gets a lot of flak for wasting precious agency resources.
Cue the James Bond theme next time you’re making invisible ink… Cumming… Man’s Field Cumming…
humiliated, the agent went on to construct a Rocket faster than sound itself…
“butt” of jokes and “semen” on the same page …
along with “wankers”, “cumming” and “stagg”
I’m not sure I can cope with this …
ROTFLMFAO
shaken, not stirred
Not exactly “Lie back and think of England.”
*KNOCK KNOCK* “What are you doing in there?”
“Just a minute! I’m, uh, writing a letter!”
Pynchon described a product much like this in Gravity’s Rainbow. But instead of being the ink, the semen would reveal the invisible ink.
The idea was that the message would be sent along with a pornographic illustration custom-chosen based on the intended reader’s predilections.
Amazing how more and more of the crazy ideas introduced in the story turn out to be true! He did have access to a spectacular amount of technical documents from WWII, so I guess it’s no surprise.
First Russian spy: What have you got there? A secret letter?
Second Russian spy: I think so, but I can’t read it. The pages are stuck together!
Mansfield… that kid’s got spunk.
Lean forward and think of England!
You think these fools are the first to come up with this mess?? No, its’ been done by those of us who’d been in prison for years.
The jokes just write themselves!
James Bond has expanded beyond the occasional secret message and now circulates a daily secret newspaper.
James Bond?
James Bond has the coolest guitar in his theme song:
7,600,000 + views?
Mancini was one of the great ones, wasn’t he?
More here from “Mark Seamen”
As an account of the first 40 years of MI6 is published, cabinet office historian Mark Seamen shows the BBC’s Gordon Corera some of the gadgets available to early secret agents.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11383496
The greatest job ever?
“Invisible ink” supplier.
I could have written War and Peace by the time I turned 16…
Just keep a stiff upper…oh, never mind.
Well…SMERSH made me say Mancini…I meant john Barry, of course!
Damn you, Blofeld!
This has been public knowledge for years.
One of the jokes that circulated in MI6 at the time was that every man was his own stylus.
That joke is normally used to refer to the use of urine as secret ink.
I wonder what the female spies used?
Talk about mixing business with pleasure.
Pedantic note: the old term for having your ink curdle on you was “mothering.” I have some very old packaging for powdered ink that says WILL NOT MOTHER IN THE WELL. That one took me a while to figure out.
best post ever!
Dammit, bimtott beat me to it. Gravity’s Rainbow is still one of my favorite books ever. Kryptosam! One of the many inventions of the sinister Dr. Lazlo Jamf…I seem to remember during the heady Mondo2000 days someone mentioning making sex toys out of “Imipolex-G.”
I wonder what the female spies used?
I guess they would have to get their hands on the required material.
This is alluded to Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow”.
First stirred….then shaken!
Ah the pen is mightier makes perfect sense now!
The penis mightier than the sword!